The Morpher is a loop of metal with several clip-on plates that rest against the bearer's knuckles when grasped. Each of these plates is an alchemical preparation for a different spell (commonly Increase Agility, Increase Reaction, Increase Intuition, Increase reflexes and Armour), all prepared to go off when the same activation phrase is uttered (The inventor favored the phrase "It's morphing time!" for unknown reasons). This naturally allows the alchemist to go from average guy to street-sam level killing machine in mere moments.

Thoughts?

No more Saturday morning cartoons for you.

Ironically, I have never watched an episode of power rangers in my life.
I have, however, watched Linkara's History of the power rangers. It's where most of my knowledge comes from.

I got the idea when I decided to try and make a kick-ass aspected alchemist. A couple of Morpher-style devices for fights, a few wands of powerbolt for bringing down foes too tough for his normal weapons, some healing patches for when he gets wounded, that sort of thing. Yes a mystic adept can do it better, but a dedicated alchemist just feels so cool! I'm like Batman: I can beat anything if given time to prepare.

I would do this for the whole freaking team.

Each of them would need a different colour ranger power...

And in the morning you spend an hour preparing the stuff and then a couple of hours to sleep off the drain. Very heroic...

I'm a professional criminal. Very heroic...

Could have an alchemy sweatshop churning them out, the kids make them in the morning and sleep it off while you are out being all heroic.

Main problem with that is that most of the spells I suggested are health spells, which are command trigger only.

Make a modified version with combat sense, armour, and other spells along those lines on the other hand...

The preparation casts with Force+Potency. I suppose all the powerful alchemists should be blood mages .

Powebolt is wimpy. But I think alchemy gives you a a way to make indirect spells quite powerful. The Force of the preparation doubles as the Magic in the test, and net successes double as Spellcasting. The Force remains the Force. Thus, Force is Force AND adds to the number of dice.

With rating 6 Magic, rating 6 Alchemy, Fire Bringer mentor spirit, maybe a specialization, maybe a focus, maybe Aid Alchemy spirit service, maybe Edge you will be able to get enough dice to get 6 hits often. If you pay an extra 1000 nuyen a month, you can have an alchemist's workshop in your home which raises the relevant limit by 2! So you can create the preparation at Force 12, spend 4 drams of reagents to keep your limit at 4, which raises to 6 in your workshop, keeping your drain stun. Take the drain of the spell +2 and resist it with a monstrous drain pool, and sleep it off with monstrous body. What you will have is a preparation with a dice pool of 12 + potency and a Force of 12. Is there a way to make this work with Magic 7 and Force 14, or is the drain just too much? Maybe with Centering and a Centering focus?

Edit: The problem is that the 12 dice to resist your test will often leave you with only 2 potency, and sometime it will fizzle, leaving with massive drain and either nothing to show for it or no time to sleep it off.

Now your goal is to create six rings that summon a free nature spirit.

For something like a force 12 fireball with command or time trigger you'd be looking at 13 drain. I.e. it would pretty much be a one shot attempt.
That means you'd really wish to use an enchanting focus to raise your success chance from 40% (12 vs. 12) to 66% (18 vs. 12) with a force 6 enchanting focus in order to get any potency at all.

Limit 6 Force 12 automatically means about 17% chance of failure, independent of magic, skill or focus. Which brings us back to the attraction of blood magic .

I was thinking something with friendlier drain.

Those odds ARE lousy. How does it work out with Limit 7 (and Magic rating 7), Force 14 and restricting it to the Punch spell, which was the only indirect combat spell I could find with F - 6 drain? That would be 10 drain.

Edit: Oh oh! Have the lynchpin on a glove so when you make the contact for the Punch spell, the spell goes off. Then the drain becomes 9!

14 vs 14 is pretty similar to 12 vs 12.

I cooked up a simple google spreadsheet , where you can check out various opposed test combinations yourself for a number of limits.

The odds make it a huge gamble. At Magic rating 8, however, if you can somehow manage to get 8 hits, preparations in the 12 to 16 Force range have only a small chance of failure, and decent odds of getting respectable potency. Drain is an absolute monster though.

The reason for all this is to get a Force 16 Punch alchemical preparation. The dice pool is 16 + potency (minus modifiers, of course), DV is 16 + net hits S, AP -16. What makes it good is that you won't need to eat drain when you use it. Arguably, the dice pool of a spellcaster with 8 Magic, 6 spellcasting, a focus, specialization, mentor spirit, Aid Sorcery and Edge would have a similar or even larger dice pool.

Is any of the above wrong?

Only that the spellcasting skill isn't involved in alchemy at all. However, call it the alchemy skill and you're fairly good.
Can a spirit aid alchemy?

I find a shot of whisky right before I start prepping the potions tends to help, does that count?

Yes, they can aid sorcery, alchemy or study.

What I meant by my spellcasting remark was that I was going for an alchemical way around the very lousy damage of combat spells while using spellcasting. My way was to use an indirect combat spell. Since spellcasting indirect combat spells is Spellcasting + Magic with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, and alchemy is based on Potency + Force with damage based on Force + net hits and AP based on Force, I was looking for a way to get both a large dice pool and large damage and a high armor penetration all by maximizing Force.

My reference to the size of the spellcasting pool was that a highly specialized spellcaster (as opposed to a highly specialized alchemist) could also have a large dice pool to go with a very high Force spell. So why bother? My answer is that the drain is so bad, that by going the alchemy route you can rest before showtime and not have to deal with knocking yourself out while under time pressure.

Let's crunch the numbers: The goal is to find a preperation that does more damage than that of an equally equipped spellcaster, under the constraint that Drain has to be kept non-lethal and Stun in both cases. So let us assume 11S as the highest exceptable drain for alchemy.

As you pointed out the indirect spell which allows the highest Force under the Drain constraint is Punch at a F-6, so you can cast it at Force 16 with a Touch Trigger. I don't see how Force is related to Magic for Alchemy, please point me towards the page number, if you do. You roll your dice for Potency, but cut off at your Magic rating (hoping your GM allows that). I think you can get a DP, where you reach, say 6 hits consistently, but frankly, it does not matter much. If you have a uncooperative GM, having less DP is actually safer, to avoid physical drain. But too little is bad as well, because it hurts the decay rate. With F16 + Potency ~5, you will have 21 DP or about 7 hits.

A Spellcaster pulling the same trick would need Magic 8, eat physical Drain, but would probably have a comparable DP (Magic 8 + Spellcasting (Combat) 8 + Spellcasting Focus 5, for example). I was going to argue that the spellcaster can repeat his trick, but actually, considering the Drain, he probably can't.

Fazit: Hobby alchemist is the way to go. Make a PhysAd, spend your PP on some physical action (Unarmed Combat, Reflexes), but learn a little alchemy (maybe 3 points) for extra heavy Punches. If you have time to prepare, it is better on almost all spells than taking drain in the field. I think the only downside is that you will have a timing problem with the decay and resting up and so on, and spellcasters will be more flexible in general.

You don't cut off at magic, you use drams (+workshop bonus) to tailor your potency limit, as it REPLACES the limit by force.
(That one is a bit unintuitive, initially i thought drams would ADD to the limit. Shem's post above cleared that up (or rather my looking up the rules in an attempt to contradict it ).)




Why? Would you consider two attempts for something with drain 10 instead of 13?

Since you're going to have a headache either way and plan to sleep it off, might just go for the real deal.

Yeah this still confuses me as the concept about Reagents in general goes, why would it replace instead of add to the limit?

I mean it works either way, it just doesn't seem right though....

Kind of wish there was a way to talk with the magic rules devs just to understand where they were going with it sometimes.

There are also some very weird inconsistencies.

Number of hits decides if drain is physical or stun, yet the drain itself doesn't depend on hits, but on force instead.
Additionally for a lot of spells, force is not the deciding factor, limit is.

So by casting a force 1 spell with reagents you can imitate the effect of a force X spell, with force 1 drain that fits in a force 1 sustaining focus.

That's practically begging for houserules.


The only reason alchemy isn't completely messed up like that is because the force is really useful for the triggered effect.
(Although preparing a large bunch of low force items with negligible drain at no cost probably isn't such a bad approach either. Just throw a handful of marbles into someone's face (using touch trigger and a GLOVE) that hurt a bit more than your regular glass bead )

Pp. 305-306 "The Spellcasting Test uses the preparation’s Potency in place of Spellcasting, and the preparation’s Force in place of Magic (with the Force also serving as the limit)."

To do this, I would try to be a good alchemist because those net hits are essential, and the Force opposes the Alchemy Test. Otherwise, you'd be limited to low Force preparations and your punches would be weaker than your actual fist. Magic is barely damaging in 5e.

...and not a single mention of summoning a massive anthroform mech/drone by yelling the phrase "We need Megazord power, now!!" ?

Shameful...

I tried that and now that spirit is turning everyone into trees
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5876f2ace...-captain-planet

6? I thought there were only 5.

Double Post - sorry

So, possibly a good idea to go through the Alchemy rules when talking about using Alchemy.

You want to make a Force 16 Punch item.

Now, first off, there is a lot of debate on whether or not you would end up triggering the contact when you put the gloves on - (this part of the rules needs clarification) but lets assume you can.

Step 1: Choose the Spell - Punch

Step 2: Choose the force - page 304 - you can't use a force higher than twice your magic - which means you would need an 8 magic - just like a mage casting the spell.

Step 3: Choose lynchpin - your glove thing

Step 4: Contact +1 Drain

Step 5: Spend 16 minutes making the preparation, and then make an Alchemy+Magic[Force] opposed by Force.
So, on average, you are opposed by about 5 successes, we will assume you roll 6 Alchemy, +2 specialization, +8 for magic is 16 dice, throw in another 5 dice for foci or spirit assistance for 21 dice, and you average about 7 hits, so 2 net hits. That gives you a Potency of 2. This means your spell will last a total of 6 hours.

Step 6: Resist Drain - you resist 11 Stun - let's assume combined stats of 11 (max in char gen for a human) - so you are going to take about 6-8 boxes of stun on average. Assuming a Willpower of 6, and a Body of 5, you are going to average about 3 boxes of healing per hour, so you will need to rest 2-3 hours before your damage is healed.

Step 7 Use the Preparation - you now roll Potency+Force [Force] against your target. So, 20 dice - which he then resists with Reaction+Intuition, and then with Body and Armor.

Which means it is hardly worth it. With 20 dice, you aren't going to need a Limit of higher than - let's call it 10 (you aren't going to need a limit that high very often, either).

Which means that a Spellcaster can cast the Punch at Force 10, and he can fairly easily generate 20 dice to cast the spell - (spellcasting + specialization +Magic + foci, etc) - and then he resists a Drain damage value of 4 - which he should be able to reduce to nothing - all without the need for the 2-3 hours of rest, plus the limit of 6 hours on the preparation, etc.

Oh boy, I am so blind... my only excuse is that I wrote the text during a telephone conference and apparently mixed up the pages in between. Can't even chalk it up to bad rule writing, it is all there and well explained. Mea culpa...

Seems like my first impression is true. Alchemy is very underpowered or let's call it circumstantial.

Alchemy is underpowered, but only on direct damage output. It's true strength is buffs, as an alchemist can bolster their allies without hindering their own abilities through both ignoring the sustaining penalty and have dealt with the drain well in advance. Also, I believe multiple alchemical preparations can be activated simultaneously, thus allowing them to bypass the normal action economy.

Alchemy is very strong, almost to the point of gamebreakingly so, but requires preparation and forethought that most magic does not and is both highly obvious on the astral plane and vulnerable to disenchanting.

2: Of course you need half the Force.
3: I was thinking a spike on a set of brass knuckles that can be screwed on and off. Anyway it's not important. Maybe the end of a fighting stick or something.
5: I would try to surpass those assumptions to almost always get 8 hits, or choose Force 14 or 15. Net hits are vital.
6: I would surpass that drain pool in various ways. I might even pick the Quick Healer quality for 3 Karma at chargen and raise Body. Drain is less if I have to go for Force 14 or 15.
7: I would expect even fewer than 20 dice, but it would be nice to have that many. Let's say 18. I hope to be able to hit with an non-damaging attack and then hope to beat their Reaction + Initiative, which could be as much as 20 dice, or 21 with Exceptional Attribute, and more if they are blocking, parrying, on full defense or by any number of modifiers. There will be people I simply can not hit, so I would need another strategy. If I hit, then what that will do is give high damage along with high AP (14-16, depending on Force). I think this would be a one hit knockout against many kinds of enemies.

As a side note, the Increase Reflexes spell needs 8 hits to get the maximum +4 dice. Having a Magic of 8 will let that work with Stun drain too.

Are we talking about a starting character? If not, all good.

If so, you are going to have a limited amount of attributes/karma to do this, so for 6, how exactly are you increasing that drain pool? Assuming you are human, and a Shamanic tradition if you have a 6 Willpower, then you can only have a 5 Charisma (since you can't start with two stats at natural maximum), which also means you can have only a 5 Body as well. If you want to cast something at Force 14, you need a Magic of 7, which means Exceptional Attribute, which means 14 of your 25 karma. If you want to speed up your healing time, Quick Healer helps, as does the proper Mentor Spirit - but that will mean you aren't getting a Mentor Spirit buff to your Alchemy test, but again, unless you add cyberware, which will reduce your Magic, you can only have a Body of 5. (and this also eats up 13 of your attribute points).

If you are planning on having a Magic of 8, remember that means you are going to have to get a minimum of 53 karma (on top of the 14 for EA)

Now, given all of that, you are still talking about a pretty decent attack (since for some reason Punch, Clout, and Blast are considered Indirect) - but it can only be done once or twice a day.

The downside of alchemy - if you are an Aspected Alchemist, that is - is that your ability only helps if you have time to prepare for it - so, runs that are time sensitive, for example, prevent you from having all your preparations done.

Fueldrop is correct though, you are better off with using Alchemy for Buffs, which usually require a lower force, which then means lower drain, less time to make the preparation, and less time to heal any drain, which means more preparations in less time. They will sustain themselves for a number of minutes equal to the force, which is good certainly for the duration of combat.

Personally, and this is just me, but an Cover Ops/Infiltration Expert built as Attributes/Skills/Resources/Magic/Race would be a cool niche character to play (and one of the few times I would play an Aspected Magician).

Grab 2 points of Cyberware and bioware and then 5 karma to bring your Magic attribute up to 1, and then use Alchemy for buffs/distractions and do damage with weapons. Cast most of your preps at force 2, so they take 2 minutes to make, do almost no drain, and use reagents to increase the limit so you can get a higher potency.

Great examples include:
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
Mindlink
Heal
Increase Reflexes (remember that this stacks with other spells/ware - you just can exceed 5d6 - so one piece of cyberware you get with your money could be Synaptic 1)
Resist Pain
Stabilize
Trid Entertainment (for distractions)
Armor
Levitate
Magic Fingers
Mana/Physical Barrier
Shadow

I couldn't remember.

It's ok at least you didn't ask for wands to be made to give schoolgirls powers to fight the monster of the week... Well now i've said it... Off to the alchemy lab.

Yes, but you better toss in an armor spell with that because if I see a schoolgirl go all glowy/glittery as this strange music kicks in, I am NOT going to stand there twiddling my thumbs while they transform.

Instead I am gonna start chucking grenades or unloading the big spells or headshot someone before they finish.

I'll just make sure transformations occur within a time dilation field.

No way. I was thinking an initiate with Centering metamagic for drain and flat out paying the extra 40 Karma to raise (Exceptional) Magic 7 to 8.

The major costs are initiating, Magic 8, Exceptional Attribute (Magic), and other things to get the Alchemy dice pool really high, Armed/Unarmed Combat, and especially the very high attributes. I would probably pay 1 Karma each to Quicken some Increase Attribute spells. I know the GM would probably make infiltration impossible for me, have me arrested, and eventually just have some dragon dispell them all. There's also the limiting factor of having spells split between Spellcasting and Alchemy.

The synergy is that the higher Magic is helpful in lots of ways other than alchemy, as is the Centering metamagic, as are the high attributes. Rather than being just good at one thing, this approach could make a character good at quite a lot.

You know, there's nothing in the rules that prevents an alchemist from enchanting a dozen lengths of Meccano with potency 6 stunbolts, all with the same command word, bolting them together into a single wand, then pulling that out and hitting the target with a dozen low-end spells at once. Sure, time limitations are an issue here, but a bunch of minor preparations > 1 big preparation.

You don't use a command word, or at least not only that; you have to concentrate on the one thing you're activating and mentally targeting at something. It also violates the "one attack per phase" rule.

By the way he set it up, it is one attack... it is just a really big one. No different, really, than Autofire in SR4.

That's just a really big spirit. Six really big spirits, that combine to form a single Great Form.

Is there any ability to mesmerise someone into inaction? Or at least non-hostile action?

Yes there is.

Page 305:

"The preparation is triggered by you. You
must be on the physical plane (or manifest if you’re astrally
projecting), have line of sight to the preparation
(as defined for Spellcasting, p. 281), and take a Simple
Action to trigger the preparation. You have some control
over the preparation’s target with this trigger. This
trigger adds +2 Drain to the creation of the preparation.
Command triggers are the only triggers preparation with
healing spells can have."

It takes a Simple Action to trigger the preparation. It doesn't say "a simple action to trigger ANY/ALL preparations", it says "THE preparation."

There is no mention whatsoever in the rules of allowing you to daisy-chain multiple preparations together using a single command word.

In the Multiple Attacks section, it doesn't say that you can use a Free Action to "trigger a number of preparations = Magic or Magic/2" or whatever.

Preparations also don't set one another off when they go off, so it isn't as if triggering one of those preparations in close proximity of the others would set them off.

Technically it says 'the preparation', because it describes a property of said preparation - you can recognize that easily because the first sentence is passive.
There is no RAW that says an identical property can not apply to more than one object of type 'preparation'.

Therefore you could fulfil the trigger requirement of multiple such objects at the same time.


Technically YOU're only doing ONE attack action (triggering a bunch of preparations). The preparations are also only doing one attack action each.
It could be compared to throwing a grenade every phase for a couple of phases and having them set up to all explode at the same time.


You could reasonably argue, that for preparations with spell type 'line of sight', a restriction applies because the target must explicitely be chosen.

EDIT:
Another analogon: Let's say you rig a location with a bunch of explosive charges to be triggered remotely by you pressing a button. Would you seriously try to tell me those charges would have to go off separately, the speed of which to be determined by the number of IPs i have and that while those charges go off i would not be allowed to take any other offensive action? Really?

No, you can't. Nowhere in the rules does it say you can set off multiple preparations at the same time, and the standard for most non-munchkin gamers is not "the rules don't say I CAN'T do it, so therefore I CAN", the standard is "the rules don't say I CAN do it, so I CAN'T."

There are specific rules covering multiple attacks in the same phase, which I quoted, and you can look at page 164 and 196. I don't see anywhere it lists Preparations.

With regards to your explosives and grenades example, the rules cover simultaneous blasts on page 183, and explosives on page 436. So there are definitive rules on how it works, and your example is invalid, as there are specific rules telling you how to do it.

Not to mention, the REASON that they do it this way is that otherwise it would allow you to make multiple spell attacks in the same action phase without

EITHER

The penalty of having to split your dice pool (if you used the Multiple Attack Free Action and Cast a Spell Complex Action)

OR

Increasing your drain by +3 per spell by using the Reckless Spellcasting Action (which would apply if you were using only one combat spell along with one or more non-combat spells)

OR

The limit on the number of spells you could cast at the same time.

The rules clearly say:
'A preparation releases its spell when a condition called the trigger is met.'

All my character is doing, is fulfilling a condition. It doesn't matter, how many objects that condition applies to.
Multiple attack rules do not apply, because the only reason why this SIMPLE ACTION counts as an attack at all is because the intend is to harm someone.
MY character is NOT using multiple weapons or performing multiple actions, the actual ATTACK is performed by the preparation, which my char just happens to trigger - i.e. his action only gets the attack flag by proxy for triggering a bunch of actions that are actual attacks.


And it's quite true, for something like a bunch of fireball marbles it makes perfect sense to use the simultanious blast rules.
Nice pointing that out.


(Imagine the hilarity when your opposition laughs at you for trying to trip them with a handful of marbles. And then you softly whisper 'kaboom'...)




Well, of course no spellcasting rules apply, you are triggering a preset command via a simple action.
The difference in the wording of 'using a preparation' to 'casting a spell' might be a tiny hint.

Your demolitions specialist is not rolling for simultaniously setting up a bunch of charges either, because the rolls happen during the PREPARATION phase, not during the combat phase.

It says:

A preparation releases its spell when a condition called
the trigger is met. Choose a trigger type for the preparation.
The trigger you pick can add to the Drain Value
of the preparation.
Command: The preparation is triggered by you. You
must be on the physical plane (or manifest if you’re astrally
projecting), have line of sight to the preparation
(as defined for Spellcasting, p. 281), and take a Simple
Action to trigger the preparation. You have some control
over the preparation’s target with this trigger. This
trigger adds +2 Drain to the creation of the preparation.
Command triggers are the only triggers preparation with
healing spells can have.


Note that it doesn't talk anywhere about how to adjudicate multiple preparations being set off simultaneously - that's because the rules to do that don't exist.

Please show me ANYWHERE in the rules that says you can set off multiple preparations with the same command trigger.

Please show me ANYWHERE in the rules that says you can have multiple preparations all using the same command trigger.

(The way that the rules specifically talk about using demolitions and grenades).

When you do, then you will have a point.

Until then, you are trying to make the rules do what you WANT them to say, rather than what they ACTUALLY say.

Just to throw in my opinion:

NO on the Command stuff. It is pretty clear: A simple action is needed for each preperation to activate.

However, I don't see how to argue similarly for Contact trigger. I can see how you can't throw more than one grenade (and why should you), but a couple of marbles? Or some kind of mechanism that brings several buff preperation (obviously only non-Health is eligible) at once into contact with you or your favourite person. Say Armor, Combat Sense and Invisibility?

This does raise a very good point on use of Command.

I would assume that the COMMAND action combines the command word itself plus some means of designating which item I am commanding to blow.

Otherwise if I was carrying a bag of marbles and planning to use them separately through the run I would need different commands for each and everyone lest I accidently set the lot off by accident upon my person.